The return of rental items of value, such as videotapes or library books, is ideally facilitated by face to face contact between the borrower of the item and a member of staff of the organization from whom the item was borrowed. In this way there is confirmation of return of the item which gives peace of mind to both the borrower and the organization personnel. However, if return is to be allowed outside of normal working hours then this type of face to face return is not cost effective. To date, for example with videotapes, this problem has been addressed by the use of an out of hours return box. This type of box tends to comprise a slot that is accessible by a borrower or user and a secure store that is not accessible by users. The slot and secure store are normally connected via a slide or chute so that returned items fall, safely and without damage, into the store.
However, problems may arise if there is a conflict between borrower and the store. For example, the borrower may allege that he or she returned an item using this out of hours box even if the item can not be found in the box. This may arise due to fraud, on the part of the borrower, the lender's personnel or a third party. Such problems may also arise due to something as simple as the misplacement of the item after it was correctly returned by the borrower.
Accordingly, it is a general object of the present invention to overcome or at least mitigate the problems experienced by video stores and the like, as identified above.